


Entering and Breaking

by Liara_90



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Action/Adventure, Canon Compliant, Ensemble Cast, Gen, Hotels, Not Shippy, POV Multiple, POV Third Person, Project Freelancer, Undercover Missions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-20
Updated: 2018-05-24
Packaged: 2019-05-09 11:39:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14715327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liara_90/pseuds/Liara_90
Summary: When a brilliant neurosurgeon turns up in Insurrectionist custody, it's up to the Freelancers to pull off a daring rescue. With none of their usual tools. In the middle of a luxury resort.





	1. Chapter 1

* * *

From the monitor on her desk, a young woman watched as two people exited a vehicle about a hundred meters north-north west of where she stood. Male and female, both looking to be around thirty years of age, in athletic shape, though their untanned skin suggesting they hadn’t been planetside for long. Neither appeared visibly armed, and were dressed in casual attire instead of fatigues or armor. Back at her desk, the young woman’s fingers were already flying across her keyboard, accessing files from within the building’s heavily-guarded server room.

A soft _beep_ punctuating her typing, as the building’s security system registered a match, facial recognition algorithms identifying the new arrivals. Two headshots popped up on her monitor, accompanied by data as to their owners’ names, ages, and heights. The images were pulled directly from the Bureau of Customs and Immigrations, little more than an hour ago. It was hard to judge which was the more striking of the two. It _should_ have been the man, who wore a long scar like a stripe across his face, one eye obviously a casualty. And then she glanced at the piercing green gaze of the woman adjacent to the man on the screen. It _should_ have been the man...

The two arrivals entered the building, walking purposely but unhurriedly towards her. She straightened up, controlling her breathing, keeping her expression pleasantly neutral. The man reached her position a half-step before his companion.

“Good morning, and welcome to the Beyaz Saray,” the hotel receptionist greeted, flashing a polite smile. “Mr. and Mrs. Jones, correct?”

“ _Actually_.” The man leaned forward, resting his elbows on the marble countertop that segregated the guests from the staff. “It’s pronounced _Jo-en-es_ ,” he corrected, an easy grin on his face. “But don’t worry - it happens all the time.”

The receptionist blinked, momentarily stupefied, before a lifetime in customer service reasserted itself. “Of course, my apologies, sir,” she replied, inclining her head by degrees. Already, her fingers were appending a note to the hotel guests’ dossiers, making sure no other staffer would repeat her mistake. “Let me pull up your accommodations.”

The informational was already on her screen, her pause was more to make sure the bellhops had enough time to trek the guests’ luggage up to “...the _honeymoon suite_ , is that right?”

“Sure is,” the man called Jones confirmed, resting his forearms on her counter. “We wanted to go somewhere _adventurous_ for our honeymoon. See the galaxy!”

The receptionist smiled, having heard a variation of the same line every day for the past six years of her employment. “Well, I’m sure Ricaéricain will have _plenty_ of surprises for you.” She pulled up their booking information, confirming that the cleaning crew had finished their ‘Purge’ of the suite since the last occupants had been vacated. “And you’re here for five days?”

“Yeah, really wanna spoil by fia- excuse me, my _wife_ ,” Jones answered, glancing over his shoulder. “Still sounds kinda funny calling you that, babe.”

Inwardly, the receptionist was rolling her eyes. Nothing deadened you to the idea of romantic love like witnessing first-hand how many marriages fell apart during these luxurious getaways. But the picture-perfect smile plastered to her face never wavered. “Aw, you two must be so in love.”

“We must be.”

The receptionist glanced up, realizing that the newly-minted Mrs. Jones had spoken for the first time since her entrance. The woman’s voice was a bit gruffer than she’s expected, low and sardonic. She was wearing a strappy sundress, pale blue, a floppy straw hat on her head and designer sunglasses shading her eyes.

And she had ‘problematic guest’ written all over her face.

The receptionist coughed, tucking a few wisps of hair back under her headscarf in an old nervous habit. “Well, here you two are,” she said, sliding two keycards across the counter. “And please don’t hesitate to ask if there’s anything you need-”

“ _We won’t_ ,” Mrs. Jones answered abruptly, snatching the two keys off the Carrara marble counter. She glanced at her husband. “Shall we, _dear_?”

The receptionist watched as Mr. Jones awkwardly slipped Mrs. Jones’ hand into his own, the two making their way to the elevator bay without needing to ask for directions.

Yeah, there was _no way_ those two made it to their first anniversary.

* * *

York’s hand slipped from Carolina’s as soon as they were inside the elevator.

“Hey,” he said, keeping his voice low, even though they had the lift to themselves. “Sorry if I made you uncomfortable back there.”

Carolina rolled her eyes behind those Milan-designed lenses. “You didn’t,” she promised, scratching her neck. “And it’s not like you have to keep this up for long.”

York fought very hard to suppress a ‘ _that’s what she said_ ’-shaped retort. “Yeah,” he agreed, diffidently. “Shame this is such an in-and-out assignment. Would’ve _loved_ to do a few week’s recon here.”

“Keep dreaming,” Carolina replied, though she grinned a little at that. “Remember, we’re here for a mission.”

* * *

“...Your mission,” the Director continued, addressing the Freelancers assembled on the bridge of the _Mother of Invention_ , “is positively _imperative_ to the advancement of our operations. I do not have to remind you that _failure_ is not an acceptable outcome.”

A few of the Freelancers bristled a little, missteps and shortcomings from previous missions returning unbidden to their minds. Thankfully, the Director was not in the mood to linger on their prior inadequacies, and continued without pause.

“Your _objective_ is a scientist named Walid Kebede.” The holographic tabletop shimmered for a moment, before resolving into a large-than-life bust of Doctor Kebede. Biographical information flashed beside his head, informing those Freelancers who bothered to read it that he was a fifty-three-year-old ONI neurosurgeon who’d gone M.I.A. eleven months ago. “We have reason to believe that Doctor Kebede has been captured by the Insurrectionists.”

It was Agent Connecticut who spoke next. “What would the Insurrectionists want with a neurosurgeon?” she ventured to ask, her expression unreadable beneath her helmet.

Everyone saw how the Director’s fingers curled into a fist. “ _What_ the Insurrectionists want with Kebede is none of your concern, Agent Connecticut,” he growled, causing C.T. to shrink into herself as much as was possible in Explosive Ordnance Disposal Armor. “ _Retrieving_ the Doctor _is_.”

Counselor Price stepped forward, diffusing the burgeoning tension by redirecting the Freelancers’ attention to him. “We believe that Doctor Kebede will be accompanying the Insurrectionists to a meeting with potential financial sponsors. At the Beyaz Saray on Ricaéricain.”

“The Beyaz?” Washington exclaimed, accompanied by a low whistle from York.

“How much cash do these fuckers have?” growled South.

“ _Quiet_.” The Director turned around to face them, silencing the cross-talk. “We believe the Insurrectionists captured Kebede several months ago. Our intelligence indicates that they have implanted Kebede with a radio-controlled bomb chip, _compelling_ his cooperation.”

Everyone quieted a little at that, allowing the Counselor to fill the void. “Doctor Kebede was once a professional colleague of mine,” he continued, softly. “He was a brilliant scientist in the field of cybernetics, helping design many of the systems that make human-A.I. interface possible.”

“ _If_ Doctor Kebede is at the Beyaz, your mission will be to extract him, and return him to our protective custody,” stated the Director. “ _However_ , we cannot guarantee that Kebede will be be amenable to a rescue. Agent Connecticut, you will be tasked with neutralizing the bomb chip inside of Kebede’s skull.”

“Yes, sir.” She was Project Freelancer’s go-to explosives expert; her tumbling rank on the leaderboard wouldn’t have earned her a slot on the roster otherwise.

“Once Agent Connecticut has disarmed the explosive, you will extract Kebede _back_ to the _Mother of Invention_. Are there any questions?”

“Yeah.” South broke the silence, taking a small step forward. “What if C.T. fucks up and can’t defuse the bomb?”

An uncomfortable quietness settled over the bridge.

“Then your objective is to ensure Kebede does not return to enemy custody. Do I make myself clear?”

He was looking right at her.

“Yes, sir,” Carolina replied.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wash and South get in a fight. Carolina plays action hero. North talks about physics.

* * *

As much as the others had enjoyed ribbing them over it, York and Carolina were in the honeymoon suite for one reason and one reason only, and that reason was geometry.

The Beyaz Saray was a colossal resort that technically comprised over a dozen facilities across several square miles, but the primary hotel complex was shaped like an elongated horseshoe. On the western end of the hotel’s arc (an analogous _heel_ of the horseshoe), and forty stories up, was one of the VIP Honeymoon Suites, which Project Freelancer was paying a king’s ransom for York and Carolina to occupy. Because on the _other_ side of the horseshoe just so happened to be the Beyaz’s Business Center  & Conference Rooms, with their beautiful floor-to-ceiling windows.

“North, how are we doing?” Carolina asked, muttering into the microphone embedded in the frame of her sunglasses.

“ _Hey Carolina. No news is no news_.” Which meant that their target was still holed up in his room, surrounded by the Insurrectionists’ security detail. Under other circumstances, Carolina would’ve rolled the dice on just storming their position head-on, but as long as the Doctor had a radio-controlled bomb stuck in his brain, they’d need a different approach.

“Copy that,” she murmured back. “Keep eyes on. And let me know if anything changes,” she finished, as York unlocked the door to their suite.

“ _Will do. Stay frosty Carol-”_ the rest of North’s reply was lost to the recipient, as Carolina’s attention to monopolized by someone in their suite who was _not supposed to be there._

Freelancer Agent Washington sat on the massive round bed in the middle of the room, an unwrapped chocolate bar in one hand, an uncorked bottle of champagne in the other. “Oh. You guys are here early.”

The door slid shut behind them.

“Wash, nice to see you’re settling in,” replied York, unslinging his backpack and dropping it to the floor.

“Hey, how often in life do you get to pillage a mini-bar guilt-free?” he fired back.

Carolina shook her head, sliding her own bag down next to York’s. “How’d you get in?” she asked, tossing off her hat and her sunglasses.

Wash shrugged. “Told the cleaning lady I’d forgotten something.” He took a noisy slurp of the champagne the ‘newlyweds’ were intended to have enjoyed. “Oh, there’s a jacuzzi in the bathroom, you know. I took the liberty of making sure everything works.”

“Thanks for taking that bullet, Wash,” York said with a small laugh. Then he touched two fingers to his ear. “D, can you hop into that flatscreen there?”

A second later, the room was bathed in the radiant green of A.I. Program Delta, who had figured out how to talk to the 72” behemoth opposite the bed. “It would appear so, Agent York.” The Spartan stood taller than ever on the mounted TV, glancing about the room. “Though I must say the transition from _holographic_ to _two-dimensional_ is… discomforting.”

“Well, it’s still nice to have a face to talk to,” York replied to the avatar.

“Indeed.”

Carolina shook her head, turning her attention to the pieces of hard-case luggage the hotel staff had lugged up for them. “They better not have banged anything up in here,” she muttered, unlocking the containers. She’d have preferred to carry them up herself, but given her cover, that probably would have aroused unwanted attention.

York strolled over to their window, peering out of it. “Damn, looks like there’s a pretty bad sandstorm on the perimeter shield,” he observed, squinting with his good eye.

“Affirmative,” Delta piped it, though it hadn’t really been a question. He vanished from the television screen, replacing his avatar with satellite heat-maps and barometric pressure readings. “Wind speed is estimated at 130 kilometers/hour at 892 millibars. Prolonged exposure would likely lead to severe respiratory damage.”

“Then thank God for the shield,” York replied.

The reason that Delta was being projected from a television and not York’s armor was the same reason Carolina’s luggage contained a lot of strappy sandals and nothing in the way of firearms: _Customs_. And the reason they couldn’t just _bypass_ Customs was… the shield.

Which was the same reason the Insurrectionists were meeting on Ricaéricain, and it wasn’t a partiality to tuck-down service. Once, Ricaéricain had been a glittering gem in the crown of human colony worlds, its settlement financed by the last of Earth’s petrocrats. Tens of thousands of colonists had flocked to the Goldilocks-zone planet, and millions more invested their savings into it.

Things… hadn’t gone smoothly... 

Like dozens of other systems - Armada, Venezia, Chorus - Ricaéricain hadn’t so much declared independence as it had simply slipped out of the grasp of the UNSC, courtesy of the Great War. The long-awaited planet-wide Terraforming project had failed, the promised transformation turning out to be little more than a mirage. Once it became clear that geoengineering away the planet’s monstrous dust storms wasn’t going to be an option, the planet’s administrators had switched to less sweeping solutions, choosing to safeguard a handful of settlements instead of overhauling the entire planet.

The result: the shields.

The technology was fundamentally no different than the bubble shields Agent North could deploy, only much larger in scope and much weaker in stopping power. The Beyaz Saray, like every other inhabited place on Ricaéricain, was protected by a solid-light dome that stretched for miles in every direction, powered by massive, subterranean fusion reactors. The shields weren’t bulletproof but they were strong enough to keep the deadly sandstorms at bay.

Hence their problem.

“Oh, good, our ‘climbing gear’ made it through,” York remarked, as Carolina began tossing some of their equipment onto the bed. Grappling guns, cables, mounts, undersuits. Wash continued munching on the room’s delicacies, watching silently.

Unlike every other assignment they’d been on, in _this_ case, the Freelancers needed to go through Customs and Immigration. The shield dome meant that no ship - not even a stealth vessel - could approach the city unnoticed, since anything that broke through the shields would trigger alarms across the planet. Which meant _every_ incoming ship could be screened. Ricaéricain couldn’t care less if you were importing pharmaceutical-grade heroin, but firearms were a strict _no_ , unless you were a properly-licensed local security contractor.

Which the Freelancers were not. Something the Insurrectionists had no doubt had in mind when making their reservations.

_“Ladies and gentlemen, we have movement.”_ York, Wash and Carolina all halted at that, the mission’s tempo suddenly kicking into high gear. “ _I got baddies leaving E-2119, heading in the direction of Target-2.”_

“They’re _also_ here early,” Wash observed, trying not to sound worried. A mission that should have had three weeks’ prep time had been compressed to only a few hours. Now, it looked like they didn’t even have that.

Carolina nodded. “York: make the call. Wash: get back to your room.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Wash replied, the levity draining from his tone. Then he clicked on his mic, muttering into the collar of his shirt. “South, ready to make a scene?”

On the other end of the radio link, he knew she was grinning.

* * *

Darian Ghasemi walked purposefully but unhurriedly through the labyrinthine corridors of the Beyaz, never once needing to check the signage for directions. Like his partner marching in lockstep beside him, Darian had worked security at the Beyaz for over half a decade, and was intimately familiar with just about every nook and cranny. And he had seen _just about_ everything. Drunken fights in the bars. Overdoses in the bathrooms. A subcommittee chairmen dead in an autoerotic asphyxiation accident, a _ménage à trois_ that had ended as a suicide pact.

“ _According to their records_ ,” a bored voice in his earphone said, “ _that room contains Mr. George Washburne and Ms. Dakota Southerland. Twenty-eight and twenty-six, respectively. First time guests, checked in earlier today.”_

Darian grunted at that. It was good to know, even if there really wasn’t anything he could do with that intel. But it sounded like a domestic dispute, and those were always a pain. Vacations had a surprisingly effective way of bringing out the worst and most irritable parts of a couple, often exacerbated by a sleepless night of travel, free booze, and buyer’s remorse. Rarely did the Hotel go a full day without some pent-up relationship issue exploding _somewhere_ on its grounds.

“You think the trophy wife finally snapped?” asked Karimi, straightening his uniform cap as he did.

Darian shrugged. “He’s kinda young to have a trophy wife, isn’t he? I’m guessing an affair.”

Karimi didn’t have to say anything, but he didn’t need to talk for his disagreement to be known. The two men had served together in the Great War, in the same military police unit, mostly shepherding refugees from one resettlement center to another. It had been soul-draining work, but both men had learned from it, cultivating an array of cross-cultural de-escalation skills which served them well in their postwar careers. And they still got to carry guns, too, even if they were just dinky little pistols never once fired in anger.

“What was the room again?” Karimi asked, as they rounded the final corner between Point A and Point B.

The sound of shattering glass interrupted Darian before he could answer.

A door was flung open, out of which stumbled a twenty-sound man in a polo and slacks. In his haste to exit he slammed right into the opposite wall, grunting painfully.

“You fucking _asshole_! You goddamn fucking _piss_ -stain!” The voice was coming from inside the room, sharp and female. “I can’t believe you would _do_ this to me!”

The man shot Darian and Karimi a desperate look, practically tripping over himself to reach them. As he approached, Darian noticed a handful of small cuts on his face and collarbone, gouges like scratch marks. He suppressed a sympathetic wince.

“You gotta help me,” the man pleaded, clutching onto Karimi’s tunic. “She’s a fucking psychopath, I swear.”

The _she_ in question emerged a second later, looking like an infuriated valkyrie ready to drag his soul kicking and screaming out of this world. Her dirty blonde hair was a wavy mess around her shoulders, shoulders which were currently heaving with righteous anger.

“You can’t run away from me _this_ time,” she snarled, closing the distance between them all. “If you run-”

“Ma’am, please, my name is Darian Ghasemi,” interrupted Darian, raising his palms slightly in a gesture of non-hostility. “For the safety of our guests, we need to-”

Before he could so much as blink, Darian Ghasemi was doubled-over, his lungs afire.

Freelancer Agent Washington attacked, acting on a nonverbal cue that had been signaled by South, unnoticed by the guards. He’d struck the nearest guard with a heel-palm strike right in the solar plexus, followed by a series of blows to the head which had transported Darian into a state of kinetic-induced unconsciousness.

Karimi had lasted a few moments longer, but only because he’d turned his body at the last possible second, presenting South with a smaller profile to hit. For a few seconds, anyways. She’d locked his dominant arm between hers, dislocating it at the shoulder as she sent him toppling to the floor. Karimi had had the presence of mind to try rolling away, but South had been too fast, pouncing on top of him and grabbing each lapel of his uniform with her opposite hand. Karimi had been able to get out a stifled _hel-_ before South cut off his circulation at the neck, choking Karimi into unconsciousness.

She maintained her grip for a few more seconds, until after Karimi had gone limp. Releasing her hold, South glanced up at Wash, who was doubled over, panting slightly.

“You’re bleeding,” she noted, pointing to her own cheekbone.

Wash grunted and wiped away the blood, from a small cut beneath his eye. That had been South, who’d gotten a _little_ to immersed in her performance. She’d scratched him up worse than the gun-toting baddies.

_Speaking of_ …

South removed Karimi’s pistol, which was still buckled in its leather holster, safety on.

“You know, I almost feel sorry for them,” she mused, poking Karimi’s limp head.

* * *

York stepped out onto the suite’s patio, resting his hands on the gunmetal grey railing. Cliché a saying as it might have been, this really _was_ a view to kill and/or die for. Most of the Beyaz Saray was spread out beneath him, Neo-Abbasid architecture housing hundreds of the galaxy’s wealthiest citizens.

The space in the middle of the “U” was filled with a vast pool of crystal-clear water, colored blue by its tiles. When contrasted with the dry and dusty streets of “real” Ricaéricain, the effect was like stepping into an oasis. Or a mirage.

Carolina, of course, was having none of it.

“Straight-line distance to the target is 108.64 meters,” she declared, using a pen-sized laser rangefinder to asses their surroundings. Project Freelancer had been able to pull the hotel’s blueprints before the mission had launched, but nobody was dumb enough to put blind faith in decade-old floor plans. “Straight-line distance to the opposite superstructure is 96.45 meters.”

York noted that she was writing down the measurements on a pad of paper embossed with the hotel’s letterhead. Because _of course_ she was going to insist on doing some back-of-the-envelope calculations herself. She’d already changed, too, exchanging her modest sundress for a matte black ensemble. The outfit looked vaguely similar to the undersuits they wore with their MJOLNIR armor, though Carolina was wearing something from the civilian market, advertised in all the ‘ _extreme outdoorsmen_ ’ magazines. It wouldn’t stop a bullet, but it was a hell of a lot better than nothing.

They heard a commotion outside the door, loud voices and heavy _thuds_. “Guess that’s our cue?” York observed, wryly.

Carolina said nothing, but nodded in agreement. Setting the rangefinder down, she reached over to a glass table that was _supposed_ to carry dainty martini glasses and offworld wine bottles, but _instead_ was covered with a disassembled grappling hook and an aftermarket modification kit.

“ _D_ ,” York said, in a low voice, “let’s spot her, shall we?”

York immediately squinted, bowing his head slightly as he felt Delta re-assert himself in his mind, the AI piggybacking on York’s optic nerves. That’d mean a migraine in a couple of hours for York, but without their usual Freelancer gear, it was the best way for the AI to get ‘eyes on’.

“Wind speed estimated at 2.6 kilometers per hour, blowing south-south west,” Delta declared, piping his voice through both their earpieces. It should have been faster, but the city’s shields moderated the air currents so that there was never more than a pleasant breeze. “Agent Carolina, the target for your first hook is the-”

“York, tell him I don’t need the-”

“Hey, D, remember what I said about backseat driving?” York murmured.

He could feel Delta’s mind _processing_ in his own. “Of course. My apologies, Agent Carolina. I did not mean to suggest that you-”

Carolina interrupted him by squeezing the trigger, magnetically launching the grapple hooks across the expanse of the Beyaz Saray. The hooks were attached to an extended cable line - significantly longer than anything she’d used on a mission before - a line which snapped taut as the hooks sunk into the stonework on the other side of the “U”.

York picked up the rangefinder, closing his bad eye as he assessed the hook’s point of impact. “Looks like a solid latch, Carolina,” he said, eyes playing over where all four talons were digging into the masonry. “Angle looks good, too.”

“Agreed,” Delta added. “Agent Carolina hit the target to within 2% of optimal placement.”

York heard a low growl rumble in Carolina’s throat, and he wasn’t sure if it was directed at Delta or herself. While he’d been assessing her shot, Carolina had attached a special clamp to the butt of her grappling gun, which allowed her to affix her end of the cable to the metal railing of their balcony.

“Step 1 is down,” York said, as Carolina let go of the gun. He winced a second later as she delivered a powerful kick to the railing. The cable wobbled slightly as the reverberations raced down it, but the line remained affixed. That was all the time for stress testing they could afford, unfortunately.

If any of the bathers in the vast swimming pool beneath had looked straight up, it would have appeared as if a tightrope had just materialized overhead.

The door to their suite was flung open, revealing a haggard-looking Agent Washington. He was breathing heavily, and he had several new scratches around his face and collarbone. York suppressed a grin.

“ _Two pistols_ ,” Wash declared, lobbing the stolen guns onto the bed with a carelessness that would’ve made every firearms instructor in the Milky Way wince.

York strolled over to collect them, making sure the safeties were _on_. “Where’s South?” he asked, confirming that the magazines were full.

Wash gestured over his shoulder. “I put her on body duty,” he answered. “Can’t have the guests tripping over KO’d guards, can we?”

York shrugged. “They’ll have a lot bigger problems in a few minutes.” The handguns were Misriah Armory M6As, a civilian version of the M6-series that anyone who’d ever served in the UNSC was familiar with. It wouldn’t have been York’s first choice of sidearm, but there was the old saying about beggars and choosers.

“ _Charlie Team is armed_ ,” North declared, piping in uninvited over their earpieces. He and C.T. had evidently pulled off their own robbery as well. “ _VIPs are in position, we’re holding in the adjacent hall. Four-plus baddies with guns downwind.”_

York nodded, even though North was nowhere within sight. “Copy. Alpha Team is in final prep. Go in two.” He and Wash exchanged glances, nodding in a silent parting. Washington had his own places to be.

Shutting the door, York sped back to the balcony, where Carolina was hurriedly assembling her second grapple gun. The view suddenly looked a lot less appealing - the sun was too bright, the air too hot. The fantasy, in short, was over, and all that was left was the danger.

“Anchor-2 is approximately 60.25 meters down the cable,” Delta was saying, as Carolina was lining up her second shot. “Wind speed has dropped to point-five kilometers per hour.” York said nothing, simply watching the look of supreme concentration on Carolina’s face, her eyes unwavering even as strands of red blew in front of them.

She squeezed the trigger, and her second grapple went sailing. _This_ one, however, was aimed not at the opposite side of the hotel, but towards the middle of the tether she’d already created. A half-second after it’d launched, the head of the grappling hook was snagged by the tightrope. The hooks had nothing to sink themselves into, and thus automatically coiled inwards, cinching themselves around the cable.

This time, Carolina didn’t let go of the grappling gun. She kept it clutched firmly in her hands, the cable trailing with her as she moved.

“And now the _pièce de résistance_ ,” York said, once Carolina’s handiwork was finished. She turned, and saw the M6A pistol he was presenting her, thoughtfully wrapped in the same white cloth that the champagne had come in.

“Most men go with roses,” she observed dryly, picking up the pistol and double-checking the magazine.

“I try to be thoughtful with my gifts,” York replied, with mock amorousness. Carolina slid the pistol into a semi-improvised holster at her hip. “Time to Tarzan?”

“That’s not how it works,” Carolina reminded him, for the umpteenth time. But he was less wrong than he should have been. Thanks to a few realities they’d hashed out while drafting the CONOPs:

  1. They couldn’t bring their Freelancer toys, thanks to the shield. That meant no anti-personnel rifles, no flash-bangs, no suppressed SMGs, no powered armor.
  2. The bomb-chip in Doctor Kebede’s head was likely controlled by a handheld detonator, most likely carried on the person of one of the Insurrectionists. Which meant the Freelancer attack could last only a few seconds, before the Insurrectionists had a chance to figure out what the hell was happening and make him go _boom_.
  3. So they somehow needed to take out the entirety of the Insurrectionist delegations in a few seconds, using nothing more than the weapons they could scavenge off hotel security.
  4. This would require some outside-the-box thinking. Which God knew the UNSC hadn’t trained them for.



Attacking the Insurrectionists while they were in the conference room made the most tactical sense. Whichever man was important enough to hold Kebede’s life in his hands would be important enough to be at that meeting. While the Freelancers could probably shoot their way in through the front door, the Insurrectionists were smart enough to post a handful of men on guard duty. And even Carolina couldn’t kill her way through them _that_ fast.

Which left Plan B. Plan B had a lot more _physics_ than anyone was entirely comfortable with.

“D, can you double-check the numbers?” York asked, as Carolina began climbing onto a chair, standing over the edge of the balcony.

“I _am_ capable of performing over sixty trillion floating point operations per second,” Delta replied, a little testily. “And I can assure you, the numbers _have_ been checked.” Including a whole host of variables the Freelancers couldn’t hope to calculate themselves, from the effects of the oscillating tension on the cables to the aerodynamics of one Agent Carolina.

York smiled a little at Delta’s prickled ego. “Just being safe,” he promised. He cleared his throat. “D says you’re good, Carolina.”

Carolina exhaled in a steadying breath. Then she clicked on her radio. “Charlie this is Alpha. Forty seconds.” She clutched the grip of her grappling pistol in both hands. “Delta, count it in.”

York took a cautious step back, even as Delta’s voice filled his head. “All Freelancers, sync on my mark... _Mark_.”

A half-dozen voices filled his earpiece simultaneously.

“Sync.”  
“Sync.”  
“Sync.”  
“Sync.”  


“ _Sync_ ,” he and Carolina said aloud, at the exact same time.

York could feel a vague sense of satisfaction from Delta, some kind of pride at getting the Freelancers to work so harmoniously. “Agent Carolina… _jump_.”

As North had pointed out back on the _Invention_ , it was a physics problem. (He’d tutored high schools physics, because of course he had, and seemed to be the only Freelancer York knew with a real appetite for hard math.) As cinematic as it would have been to just swing directly across the expanse of the U, without powered armor that was something even a Freelancer wouldn’t survive. Carolina was essentially turning herself into a human pendulum, and a pendulum was at its maximum kinetic energy at its lowest point. Or if you wanted to get pedantic about it, as North most certainly did:

_E_ _k_ = ½ _mv_ 2

_“In other words,” North had patiently explained to them, free handing the calculations, “even if the angle somehow works out, you’ll have too much E K, or kinetic energy. You’re going to enter the conference room at something like 50 klicks an hour. With_out _armor, I might remind you.” He scribbled over a few lines they’d drawn on a hard copy of the blueprints. “That’s something not even you can survive, Carolina. Since we can’t lower your mass-” there were a few chuckles, silenced with a glare “-we need to reduce your velocity. That means a shorter swing.”_

Hence why the pivot point of Carolina’s pendulum was her own cable, and not the other side of the wall. Instead of entering the conference room at the lowest (aka _fastest_ ) point of the swing, she’d arrive most of the way through the _up_ swing, sharply reducing her velocity and the odds of shattering her skeleton on impact.

With a deep breath and not one look back, Carolina threw herself over the edge of the balcony.

“ _Alpha-1 has jumped_ ,” Delta narrated in her earpiece. “ _Charlie Team, assault in ten… nine…”_

Agent Carolina had long since schooled herself not to close her eyes when falling. Whether when being thrown in hand-to-hand practice, parachuting out of a Pelican, or (now) swinging from one building to another. As a result, she saw the clear blue waters of the pool getting closer and closer, its perfectly smooth surface soon encompassing the entirety of her vision. Despite her training and experience Carolina’s senses were disoriented by her perceived weightlessness, even as she maintained a white-knuckled grip on the grappling gun. She was approaching the lowest point of the pendulum at 48.51 meters/second, which was only a hair slower than her terminal velocity. And for a moment, she could make out her own reflection on the surface of the pool, a solitary figure against an infinite expanse of blue.

And her brain couldn’t tell if she was falling towards the sea or the sky.

Carolina let out a _grunt_ as she passed the lowest point in the pendulum, beginning to slow as the friction in the air worked its magic on her bodily mass. Kinetic energy began converting back into potential energy, atmospheric friction bleeding speed from her. Blinking through tears, Carolina could make out Delta’s voice in her earpiece again.

“ _Three… two…_ ”

* * *

“- _Fire_.”

York pulled the trigger twice before he had time to process Delta’s words, sending two 12.7mm x 40mm rounds sailing through the sky. They’d have only marginal stopping power by the time they crossed the width of the pools - York had had to aim almost comically high above his target to compensate for bullet drop - but they didn’t need to do a lot.

The bullets sailed through a wide panel of glass at two points, creating jagged holes right near the midline. The glass didn’t shatter, but it didn’t need to - the structural integrity had been fatally compromised.

Inside the conference room, a few heads turned, wondering if a small bird had just collided with the floor-to-ceiling windows.

* * *

“ _One… go!”_

Twisting her whole body so she was flying up feet-first, Agent Carolina burst through the glass paneling of the VIP conference suite, spinning midair. It was the kind of situation that no amount of training in the universe could have ever prepared someone for, not really.

As the milliseconds ticked by, Carolina was already assessing, analyzing, _moving_. There were at least ten men in the room, seated around both side of a polished oak conference table. The double-doors to the room were closed, and if any of the occupants had guns, they weren’t brandishing them.

Fine with her.

Carolina landed on the opposite side of the conference table, rolling over her shoulder in an effortless motion she could’ve done in her sleep. She rolled up onto her knees, residual momentum sliding her along the floor even as her hands were moving for her sidearm.

Shards of glass were still falling with delicate _clinks_ as she flicked the safety off. It was a lot like the virtual shooting galleries on the _Invention_ , where targets were thrown in front of her with such speed that she didn’t have time to think. And so she moved faster than thought, muscle memory and subconscious reflexes taking over.

_Target. Target. Target._

She squeezed off three quick shots before she could blink, close-range headshots delivered with the lethal efficiency of a John Wayne gunfighter.

Carolina took time to exhale before lining up her next shots, managing to take in the sight of the survivors scrambling blindly for guns or cover. She fired off two more rounds, taking down one man reaching for _something_ and another who had the misfortune of being too close to her.

Someone managed to get a gun out, but Carolina had already ducked under the conference table, popping out under the other side and sending a shot clear through his cerebellum. Not daring to slow down, she dropped two more targets who weren’t conspicuously cowering. Ammo was running low. She made a half-pivot, her foot sliding on the shards of glass. Another man stood in front of her. Her finger pulled the trigger halfway back-

Carolina managed to stop herself a half-second before executing Doctor Walid Kebede.


	3. Chapter 3

North and C.T. had, by comparison, a much less exciting minute. But only by comparison.

The two Freelancers hadn’t bothered with the song-and-dance routine Wash and South had pulled to get their guns, but had instead simply ambushed two unfortunate guards on their way to resolve a steroid-fueled tussle in the exercise room. North knew that their assault would go unnoticed for a few minutes at most, but by then, everyone at the Beyaz Saray would be otherwise preoccupied.

“ _Mark!”_

Delta’s voice sounded like thunder in North’s ears. Without a half-second pause he and C.T. burst around a corner, pistols snapped to eye-level, safeties off. North had memorized most of the building’s blueprint before they’d set foot on Ricaéricain, and he knew the dimensions of these hallways like the back of his hand. There were 112 feet between his position and the doors of the conference rooms, 112 feet of winding corners, storage closets, stairwells, elevators, and maintenance passageways. He tried not to think about how many excellent positions for an ambush there were between _here_ and _there_.

Because if he and C.T. moved fast enough, the enemy wouldn’t have a chance to think about it, either.

Their first hostile contact came in the form of two men leaning against opposite walls of the hallway, men C.T. had previously identified as being members of the Insurrectionist delegation. North couldn’t tell if they were carrying weapons, and didn’t have the luxury of taking the time to find out. Without breaking pace, he fired two shots into the chest of the nearest hostile, dropping the man before he could do much more than blink. The second had time to spin around in surprise before C.T. snapped off her own shot, catching him in the throat.

“Hanging left,” C.T. called out, a little belatedly, as she ran along the left-hand side of the corridor, brushing against it as she ran. The beach bag slung over her shoulder bounced almost comically as she jogged.

North grunted loudly in acknowledgement. He didn’t train much with Connie, and they didn’t move in perfectly-coordinated harmony, not like North did with his twin. But every Freelancer had survived a dozen firefights, and they knew without thinking how to position themselves in a battle.

A door to North’s right swung inwards, and a middle-aged man in a suit took a tentative step across the threshold, apparently to see what the commotion was about. North’s mind instantly ran through the mental catalogue of faces he’d spotted earlier in the day, and that man wasn’t in it.

“ _Get back_!” North shouted, taking one hand off his pistol to gesture the man away. But the civilian just stood there, half-in and half-out, right in the middle of the path North was running down. North suppressed a flash of anger and prepared to shoulder-check his way past the man, only for a Very Definitely Hostile man to round the corner at the far end of the corridor. Unlike their first two targets, this one was clearly aware of what was going on, and was cradling a small pistol in his hands.

North moved to shoot, but some part of his brain had already realized that the civilian was in the way, depriving him of a clear line-of-fire. He reflexively squeezed off a shot, but it went wide, exploding an overhead light fixture into a shower of sparks. North came to a hard stop a split-second before his adversary fired, the Insurrectionist sending a spray of bullets racing wildly down the corridor.

“ _Shit_!” C.T. yelled, firing back. Her shots missed, but they forced their target to duck back around the edge of the corner.

Which may well have saved North’s life, as he was in the middle of awkwardly manhandling his way around the civilian, whom he shoved artlessly to the ground. His ears still ringing, North quickly lined up his gun, squeezing three quick shots in the direction of their hostile.

The Insurrectionist was technically ‘in cover’, but it didn’t much matter. North’s bullets tore through the plaster of the wall, literally blowing through the corner of the corridor. The bullets were slowed, but only slightly, and the man was dead by the time North and C.T. reached his position.

“How is it possible that these guys have guns?” C.T. asked, pausing for a half-second to crouch over their downed target. Unlike the civilian M6As the Freelancers had liberated from the security personnel, the Insurrectionist had been using an M6 _C_ , which the last time she had checked, wasn’t available on the civilian market.

“I’d love to find out,” North replied, steadying his labored breaths. His tone made it clear that that was _not_ something they had time to do, though.

They rounded the last bend in their path, coming face-to-face with two more besuited men cradling military pistols. They were standing on either side of the double doors leading to the conference room, but they looked positively _bewildered_ , clearly having no idea whether to pay attention to the gunshots coming from the room behind them or the gunshots coming from down the hall. In the end, they’d focused on neither.

C.T. threw herself to the ground, landing on the carpeted floor with a _thud_. North had already double-tapped Hostile-Right by the time she’d adjusted her aim. Hostile-Left, as she’d mentally dubbed the man she was about to kill, actually dropped his gun. Whether he was attempting to surrender or simply overwhelmed with fear, C.T. would never know. Her bullet went right through his forehead.

In the end, the answer would have been irrelevant.

* * *

“ _Attention all guests_ ,” a polite but firm voice called out over unseen speakers. “ _There is a security incident underway in the East Wing. Please return to your rooms and remain there until further notice._ ”

York glanced at Wash and South, not breaking stride. “Darn, and I was hoping to hit the sauna.”

Wash let out a noise that was either a choked laugh or an airy growl. He was not exactly happy about this part of the plan. The part of the plan that might as well have been labelled IMPROVISE in big red letters, as far as he was concerned.

He’d rendezvoused with York near the bottommost part of the “U” that was the Beyaz Saray, and the two were now jogging towards the Business Center & Conference Rooms, where Carolina, C.T. and North had (hopefully) secured the VIP. Since Project Freelancer had only _extremely_ hazy estimates as to how intense the security response was going to be, Bravo Team (South, Wash, and now York) were intended to be _re_ \- rather than _pro_ active.

It was planning like this that got people killed, Wash knew. And he used the word ‘planning’ only very generously.

The three Freelancers continued their jog down the hallway, immediately spotting two more security guards who were clearly stumped as to what they should be doing. Thankfully, the Freelancers were still dressed in civilian attire, and at least _one_ of them was a pretty decent actor.

“Oh my god, somebody’s _shooting_ back there!” South yelled, even as she continued racing towards the guards. Had the security personnel been slightly more astute, they might have noticed that the three civilians barreling down on them didn’t exactly looked like vacationers fleeing in terror, but a lot more like three out-of-uniform soldiers running at double-time.

Unfortunately for the guards, they weren’t so astute.

South, a natural sprinter, reached them first, throwing herself elbow-first towards the closer of the two guards. There was a sickening _crack_ as her elbow snapped cartilage, a vicious grin on her face as she followed it up with a punch to the throat.

The second guard - completely bewildered at the bloodthirsty attack coming from a woman in denim shorts and a crop top - was left an easy picking for Wash and York, who double-teamed him with a barrage of feet and fists. Less than five seconds after the two groups had run into each other, both of the guards were unconscious.

In the grand scheme of things, that was actually a pretty good outcome for anyone crossing paths with three Freelancers in the middle of a mission.

“Got his piece,” South declared, triumphantly yanking a pistol from its holster.

“Same here,” York called back. The three took off at a jog without any more delay.

Wash loudly cleared his throat, something that was actually pretty difficult to do while running. “Hey, York,” he said, quickening his pace slightly to pull up beside York’s good eye. “Did you lose the gun I gave you earlier?”

“Hm? Oh, nah, still got it,” York replied, patting his waistband.

Wash waited for the realization to dawn on York. A few seconds later, he realized that it wasn’t going to happen. “Mind sharing? I don’t have anything.”

The three Freelancers rounded a corner, forcing their way through a crowded elevator landing. A few heads turned in bewilderment, and one or two people may have shouted. South had thrown herself through a hotel luggage carrier like she was filming her own personal parkour movie.

“I could,” York finally replied, as they entered a quieter hallway. “But I kind of have a sweet John Woo thing going on right now.” He made a show of raising both pistols, crossing over his wrists, like he was about to shoot his way through a Kowloon soundstage. Wash smacked his shoulder, causing York to laugh and quicken his pace faster still.

Wash barely managed to catch the pistol York threw over his shoulder. His palms were sweaty, but they were almost through the _IMPROVISE_ phase of the operation. If they could just survive the next five minutes, they were probably safe.

* * *

_Five minutes later…_

“ _Fuck_!” Wash swore, as a handful of guards burst out of the elevator doors, guns ablaze. _These_ suits had evidently taken the time to weapon up, too - they were coming at the Freelancers with fully automatic submachine guns instead of daintier pistols. The rounds were small caliber but packed _more_ than enough punch to send Wash scampering around the nearest corner. Hotel security ended up homing in on them a lot faster than the Freelancers had hoped.

“At least four of them,” he reported to York, doubling over slightly from exhaustion. York nodded wordlessly, slowly backpedaling as he did. He and Wash were holed up just outside the conference room Carolina had swung into, and he knew that their position was _not_ defensible.

He poked his head into the conference room. “No mean to rush you, ladies,” he called out, catching Carolina’s eye, “but whatever you need to do, do it _fast_.”

Emerald eyes swiveled to C.T.

“I’m on it,” Connie called back, throwing her beach bag onto the polished oak table. Reaching in, she tore off the false bottom that had been stitched into the bag, revealing a cornucopia of exotic electronic devices.

“You’re up, Doc,” declared Carolina, grabbing Doctor Kebede by the forearm and marching him towards C.T. The Doctor had seemed to be in shock from Carolina’s blood-soaked entrance, and his eyes darted frantically about, showing nothing but animal fear.

“What are you doing to me?” Kebede managed to ask, his voice quivering as he was shoved bodily into a chair. Neither Carolina nor C.T. seemed to pay much attention to the corpse by the chair’s legs, but the Doctor certainly did.

“Getting that damn bomb out of your head,” Connie replied, doing her best not to sound aggravated. She picked up a device that looked vaguely like a turn-of-the-millennium security wand, and began running it around his skull. “You have any idea what they stuck in you? Or where? Explosive, nerve-stim, organic? Was it just remote-triggered or is there a backup timed detonator?”

But Kebede just sputtered, twisting in his chair and making a mess of C.T.’s readings. “I _don’t know what you want._ ”

C.T. hissed as the wand blinked _red_ , affirming the absence of any of the more common implants. She tapped her earpiece. “Guys, I’m going to need a minute.”

* * *

A bullet soared over North’s head, smashing through a pipe in the ceiling and dousing the Freelancer in a cascade of recycled bathwater.

“You have _one minute_ ,” he called back, blindly firing two rounds around the corner before sliding back. Even over the sound of the burst pipe, a pitiful scream confirmed he’d hit _something_. “Wash, how’s our exit?”

Agent Washington poked his head back from the emergency access stairwell he’d been covering. “There’s movement on the ground floor!” he shouted back, his voice echoing off the concrete walls of the stairwell. “They’re holding, but I wouldn’t bet on it for too long.” Wash ducked back into the emergency exit, trying to tune out the sounds of gunfire and listen just to the echoes from that vertical canyon. _Fuck_. “They’re coming from above, too.”

Another hail of bullets whizzed past North. The rounds missed, but much of the ensuing shrapnel didn’t, sending chips of concrete and steel at an explosive velocity into his skin. Biting his lip, North sunk low to the ground, his torn muscles protesting as he blindly fired another two rounds around the corner. He would have killed for some proper suppressive fire right now.

“Niner, you catch that?” North yelled, far louder than the radio link required.

* * *

“Copy that, Charlie-1,” Four Seven Niner muttered into her mic, “moving to the _shitstorm_ contingency.”

“What was that?” asked the man seated beside her, a sixty-something year old from the Vegas Quadrant with a Navy cap and a beer gut.

“Oh, just talking to myself,” Niner replied, shuffling slightly in her seat. “Nervous habit.”

The man (he’d introduced himself as Brendan Logan but Niner saw no reason she’d need to retain that information) chuckled a little at that. “No need to be worried about anything, missie,” he said, just a little condescendingly. “This baby here is one of the safest birds in the skies. Same thing the UNSC uses for its pretty marines, just repackaged for you civvies.”

Niner cleared her throat. She wanted _oh-so-badly_ to point out that the man’s “baby” was subject to no fewer than three airworthiness directives due to faults in the avionics that greatly increased the risk of a vortex ring state, but suspect that doing so might blow her cover.

She was, after all, here for a sightseeing flight.

The Beyaz Saray, like many hotels surrounded by desolate nothingness, offered reasonably-priced air tours to guests bored of the spas and the pools and the couples massage sessions. The flights - run eight times daily - took a small group of passengers up in a civilian version of the UH-144 “Falcon”, a vertical take-off and landing helicopter refurbished and rebranded to be more palatable to a non-combatant ridership. This flight happened to have a manifest of just one pilot and one passenger, since Project Freelancer had had the foresight to buy up all the other tickets for this tour.

Speaking of... 

“Whoa there,” the pilot called out over the radio. “Sorry, missie, sounds like there’s been some kind of a security hootenanny. I’m gonna have to set us on the ground for a spell until the ATC wieners give me the say-so.”

“Awww, _really_?” Niner asked, pouring as much pout as she could into the words. Even as she spoke, though, she was unbuckling her safety harness, sliding her way up to the cockpit. “But I paid two hundred bucks for this tour!”

The pilot, too focused on the chaotic messages coming in from the Beyaz Saray, didn’t notice that his one and only passenger was no longer in her seat. “Safety first, missie. And I promise you’ll get your hours in the sky. Or a refund, at the very least.” He flicked a few switches on the radio panel. “Or hotel credit, maybe.”

Niner slipped something out the inner pocket of her jacket. Something small and plastic, which could easily have been mistaken for a tube of eyeliner.

“So I’m not really all that good at this,” she said, speaking more to herself than the pilot. “But could you do me a favor and look at the number two engine?”

“Huh?” The pilot, without thinking, instinctively complied, craning his neck to the right to take a look at the starboard rotor.

And before he could turn back, Niner jabbed 10 ccs of high-potency sedative right into his external jugular vein.

“ _Gah!_ ” Despite being the attacker, it was Niner who let out a short yelp, more from the release of pent-up nervousness than proper fear and terror. She had a pretty high tolerance for danger - you didn’t become a close air support pilot without one - but personal combat wasn’t really her cup of tea. She preferred her risks take the form of flying at five hundred miles an hour at treetop level, thank you very much.

“Sorry about that,” Niner continued, not particularly apologetically, as she hurried to unstrap the now-unconscious pilot. “ _Umf_. Christ this is a pain.” Two-hundred-plus pounds of limp meat was unsurprisingly difficult to maneuver. She ended up dropping his slumbering form into the passenger bay, where he landed face-down with a dull _thud_. “Sleep well.”

Thanks to the sedative, the pilot would probably wake up feeling better-rested than he had in the last ten years. Assuming they survived the next ten minutes, of course.

“Okay…” Her fingers flew across the cockpit, recalibrating the avionics settings. The UH-144 was significantly smaller than the Pelicans she usually jetted about in, but she _was_ fully certified for it. It was a lot closer to the late-generations Ospreys her father had flown her around in growing up, defter and more delicate than the UNSC’s birds of burden. She had hundreds of hours in the simulator flying the UH-144 or its variants, in everything from clear blue skies to an unfolding Kessler syndrome.

She flicked open a radio channel, connecting a small thumb drive to the cockpit’s file reader. “Charlie-1 this is Four Seven Niner,” she said, toggling off a few of the -144’s automatic safety measures. “I take it you FUBAR’d the extraction?”

* * *

“ _Anything_?” C.T. shouted, for the third or fourth time. “It’s probably going to look like a detonator with some kind of extra transmitter. Anything with just one or two buttons.”

“I’m telling you, C.T., it’s _not here_ ,” Carolina called back, letting go of the corpse she had been rifling through. “Figure it out!”

Connie bit back an angry reply. Her handheld MRI scan hadn’t shown anything, though the image resolution had been somewhat fucked by Kebede refusing to sit still long enough to get a proper read. And she was running out of ideas. Kebede lacked a command neural interface implant, which would have been the obvious place to strap in a bomb chip, and his skin lacked any obvious scarring that was indicative of recent surgery. Carolina’s ballistic entrance meant that C.T. couldn't even reliably scan for nitroglycerin or other explosive chemical signatures, since the whole room was now lousy with them.

“ _Don’t mean to rush you, Connie_ ,” North called out over the radio. “But we’re running out of bullets back here.”

York and Wash suddenly appeared at the threshold of the conference room, firing out with newly-acquired submachine guns. The Twins raced in while suppressive fire was laid down, South cursing as her sandal sunk into a particularly leaky corpse.

“Connie, it’s _really_ now or never!” Wash shouted, as bullets impacted the conference room’s walls, like an inhuman and terrifying percussion.

Agent Connecticut growled - both at the pressure and the nickname - as she tossed her last gizmo aside. It had been a handheld x-ray machine with built-in virtualization capability. C.T. had run the scanner around his skull - dousing him in enough x-rays to sterilize a mid-sized sperm bank - but the holographic display had showed little more than a run-of-the-mill human cranium. Running out of ideas, she’d been betting on the bomb being a particularly exotic design, like embedded within a titanium plate used to replace a bone flat post-craniotomy. Instead, she’d found few fillings, evidence of an old cricket injury, and absolutely _nothing_ indicative of an implanted bomb. Of implanted _anything._

“I can’t find it!” C.T. shouted, as North and York overturned the conference room’s table, converting it into an improvised barricade. Given the firepower they were facing, Connie guessed it would going to be a lot less ‘hot gates of Thermopylae’ and a lot more ‘Act II of _Les Mis_ ’.

“That’s not an option,” Carolina yelled in reply, stepping back as Wash began stacking some chairs into the world’s shittiest foxhole. Everyone was speaking too loudly, their ears ringing from gunfire.

And there was too much adrenaline pumping through C.T.’s veins for her to be cowed by the rebuke.

“I’m telling you there’s _no fucking bomb in his head._ ”


	4. Chapter 4

* * *

“I’m telling you there’s _no fucking bomb in his head._ ”

Carolina actually froze at those words.

She was dimly aware that the gunfire outside had stopped. Judging by the shouts from outside, the hotel paramilitary had realized the Freelancers were penned into the conference room. With any luck, they might even waste time trying to negotiate a surrender.

“ _What?_ ” Carolina finally demanded, staring into Connecticut’s eyes.

C.T. didn’t blink. “There’s no bomb, Carolina,” she repeated, a little slower and little calmer this time. “I don’t know _where_ the Director got that bit of intel, but it’s just _wrong_.”

“It’s not his…” Carolina began to speak, C.T.’s expectant gaze bearing down at her, but didn’t complete the sentence. She shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.” She turned to face Kebede. “Doctor, I know it’s hard to think clearly right now, but we’re here to rescue you.”

Kebede took a half-step back, only for York’s hand to shoot out and catch him by the collar of the jacket. Kebede startled, but York’s intervention had kept him from backpedaling all the way out of the window Carolina had burst through.

“I don’t _want_ to be rescued by you people,” Kebede half-shouted, half-pleaded, his eyes sweeping over the carnage in the room. North and Wash had begun dragging some of the corpses to the side of the boardroom, less out of respect for the dead and more to avoid tripping over them.

Carolina pointedly ignored him, sweeping the room as she tapped her earpiece. “Niner, this is Alpha Leader. We could _really_ use that exfil now.”

As if on cue, a masculine voice called out from the other side of the door, muffled somewhat by the heavy paneling. “ _We have you surrounded_ ,” he declared, quite correctly. Carolina glanced at the gap where the door met the floor, the crack of light obstructed by the shadows of several men. “ _Surrender now and you will not be harmed._ ”

Niner’s voice crackled over the radio. “I’m already punching it…” she promised, through gritted teeth.

North made a flurry of motions with his hands, using a mix of tactical hand signals and ASL to wordlessly communicate their situation: _We have six guns, no extra ammo, no cover, no exit. At least ten men with guns outside._

York glanced at the terrible barricade the Freelancers had made in front of the door. Apparently on the same wavelength as C.T., began humming the opening bars of “Do You Hear the People Sing?”.

Carolina shook her head angrily, before mouthing one word to York: _Stall_.

York cleared his throat. “Ah- _hem_. Good evening, gentleman,” he began, projecting his voice with the cadence of an old-timey showman. He paused for a second, half-crouched, waiting for a renewed bulletstorm. When that failed to materialize, he resumed his monologue. “Obviously we’ve gotten off on the wrong foot. This is actually all a big misunderstanding, you see, the _real_ bad guys are-”

“ _You have one minute_ ,” the voice on the other side interrupted. “ _Or we blow the door._ ”

York made a wordless gesture of helplessness. “Uh, sir, you _might_ want to reconsider that. There are a couple of civilians here who I’m sure you’d hate to put in the crossfire.” _One_ civilian, technically, but York worked with the ambiguity he was given. “I’m sure the Hotel would, too. Just think of all the negligence lawsuits.”

Kebede’s knees seem to give out, leaving South to roughly manhandle him back to his feet.

The room was quiet for a long moment. “ _You now have_ thirty _seconds_.”

Carolina, Wash, and North readied their pistols.

“ _Thirty seconds_ ,” Niner promised over the radio.

South grabbed Kebede and dragged him to the floor. Both cut themselves on wayward shards of glass.

“ _Twenty seconds_.” The hotel guards and Niner spoke at the same time, creating an uncanny stereo effect. North and Carolina scurried silently across the room, so they were standing at a 45-degree angle to the door. Which left York to push his back to the wall _adjacent_ to the door, one hand on the handle.

“ _Almost there_ ,” Niner yelled, as the sound of heavy lift rotors roared overhead.

“ _Ten seconds_!”

Carolina nodded, and York through the door open.

The half-dozen men who’d formed a semicircle on the other side immediately began firing, though they began firing straight ahead, directly into the overturned conference table and through the thickest of the barricade. Carolina and North returned fire a half-second later, the acute angle of their attack catching the assaulters off-guard.

And suddenly the conference room was turned into a wind tunnel.

“ _Alright_ people this bird doesn’t have a lot of fuel so let’s make this quick!” Niner yelled, her voice audible only because the Freelancers’ earpieces had automatically cranked the volume to account for the deafening noise.

A UH-144 emblazoned with BEYAZ DESERT WIND TOURS filled the window frames, the powerful tiltrotors sending dirt and glass flying through the air. Niner was obviously doing everything she could to get the UH-144 as near to the building as was possible, but there was only so close she could cut it without the starboard rotor clipping anything. Niner had actually parked the -144 at something of an angle, literally tilting the aircraft sideways to bring the fuselage even closer. The bay door had been swung open, invitingly.

C.T., South and Wash began burning through the absolute last of their ammunition, laying down suppressive fire to give North, Carolina and York time to make it to the opposite side of the room. Carolina slid behind the table, her hair flowing like a flame in the wind, but North and York didn’t stop, making perfectly-timed leaps out the window. It wasn’t a particularly _far_ jump, but with the whirling rotors of the -144 overhead and a hundred-foot plunge to imminent death below, not a particularly _easy_ one, either.

“Time to go, Doc!” South shouted, throwing away her emptied pistol. She didn’t wait for him to get up, though, and tossed herself out without looking down. Wash followed a second later, followed in turn by Connie, who spared a backwards glance at Carolina.

“Don’t…” begged Kebede, as Carolina gestured with her pistol. “I can’t jump that far.”

Carolina nudged him a little closer to the edge. She wasn’t entirely sure he could make it, either - the doc didn’t exactly have an Olympian’s build - but they were out of both time and options. She raised the pistol. It only had one round left, which was more than enough. “You can jump,” she began, enunciating clearly even as she had to bellow over the sound of the rotors, “or you can fall.”

Kebede bowed his head, murmuring something softly in a language Carolina couldn’t understand. “ _Lā ʾilāha ʾillā llāh muḥammadun rasūlu-_ ”

She was about to throw him bodily and hope for the best when the sound of gunfire exploded in her ears. And the prospect of a violent death worked wonders for the Doctor, some deeply-buried self-preservation instinct causing him to stand up and scream and throw himself with all his might.

Carolina was following him, blindly, with barely a moment’s pause. She was airborne when something _hot_ clipping her bicep, but she was already in motion, governed by the forces of gravity and momentum rather than conscious intent. She slammed into the grossly overcrowded fuselage of the UH-144, eyes squeezed shut and surrounded by flesh on all sides.

“ _She’s in!”_ York was yelling, though Carolina could only hear him through her earpiece. “ _Punch it_.”

“ _Don’t have to tell me twice_ ,” Niner bit back, and the VTOL was already in motion, gyrating around to shield its occupants from fire while it rapidly climbed in altitude. A grunt of masculine exertion accompanied the fuselage bay door being slammed shut.

Carolina’s vision blackened.

* * *

The trip back to the _Mother of Invention_ was - despite C.T.’s fear of being shot down in atmo - almost uneventful. Niner had switched their transponder codes to read as belonging to the Ricaéricain Police Force, all while feeding confusingly conflicting information to the planet’s air traffic controllers. The façade wouldn’t hold up for long, but they only needed a few minute’s misdirection. Despite the violence of the Freelancer’s attack on the Beyaz nobody had thought to call the air cops, leaving them with empty skies. The UH-144 had passed through the shield barrier, shaking the whole airship slightly, but it was rated to fly through the planetwide sandstorms. Alarms bells would be going off like crazy groundside, but by then it would be too late.

Niner had made a glib remark about their flight being standing room only, and from her spot on the deck, C.T. knew she wasn’t exaggerating. She was wedged bodily between North and Wash - something which might have been attractive, had they all horizontal and not vertical - and whatever air conditioning the -144’s bay had was obviously grossly inadequate.

To further kill the mood, Carolina was slumped over in one corner, fading in and out of consciousness as York and Delta did their best to patch her up. From what C.T. could overheard of Delta’s diagnostic, one of the bullets had torn through Carolina’s brachial artery, which was just spouting blood like a motherfucker. York had managed to patch her up well-enough for the trip back to _Intervention_ , but now the whole bay smelled like blood. The pilot Niner had incapacitated earlier was still lying face-down on the deck, enviably unconscious. And on top of all that, Kebede was obviously processing his situation _badly_ , alternating between pitiful sobbing and rocking himself back and forth.

And he kept bumping into South, which C.T. just _knew_ was going to end badly for him.

They were ten kilometers in the air and well over the horizon when their pick-up arrived.

“ _Shame you guys can’t see this_ ,” Niner declared, piping her voice in over the intercom to the windowless bay the Freelancers were crowded into. Connie knew what she was referring to. She herself had seen the _Invention_ in atmo only once before, but witnesses something so colossal as a _Charon_ -class warship was a sight that stuck in your mind.

With little more than a muted _bump_ the -144 set down inside the _Invention_ ’s hangar bay, a faint _hissing_ noise confirming that the two ships’ atmospheres were integrating. C.T. remained seated for the next several minutes, as the _Invention_ pushed its way back out of Ricaéricain’s gravity well, slipping into Slipstream as soon as its Shaw-Fujikawa drives were spun up.

Unstrapping from her safety harness, C.T. winced as the crush of bodies raced to exit the -144 as soon as possible, like antsy passengers after a trans-oceanic flight. South and Wash were the first out the door, followed by North and Kebede, and then Connie herself.

To her distant surprise, both Director Church and Counselor Price was waiting for them as they disembarked, accompanied by a small phalanx of Marines in their BDUs. Connie watched as Kebede’s eyes swiveled from one man to the other, and only North’s grip on his forearm kept the scientist from jerking away.

“I am _most pleased_ to see that you have accomplished your primary objective,” the Director began, his voice carrying throughout the cavernous hangar bay. C.T. blinked, before realizing that he was addressing not her but Agent Carolina, who had disembarked just behind her.

“When don’t I?” Carolina asked. The words were a touch defiant, but her tone was anything but. She looked like shit, in Connie’s honest opinion. York had bandaged her arm up using the limited medical supplies in the -144’s emergency kit, but a dark red stain was visible along the cloth, like a sanguine rash. Movement seemed to require a Herculean effort; her motions were jagged and erratic, like a marionette being tugged about by unskilled fingers. Still, though, the fact that she was standing at all was distantly impressive.

C.T. took a small step forward. “The Insurrections never implanted a bomb, sir,” she began, her tone falling somewhere between explanatory and accusatory. “Ran every scan I had.”

The Director inclined his head by degrees. “Then it would seem you were given inaccurate information. How unfortunate,” he replied. He didn’t sound particularly bothered by the revelation, though.

Connie turned her head back to Kebede, only to find that the man was being practically held upright by North, the older man’s knees seeming to fail him. Councilor Price had drawn close, a reassuring smile on his face.

“.... the years have been hard for _all_ of us, Walid,” he was saying, on the edge of Connie’s hearing. There was another limp wiggle from Kebede, almost childish in its impotency. “This will be much easier for you if you give us your full cooperation, _sadik_.”

A moment of silence passed between the two men. When Kebede failed to respond, Price glanced over his shoulder, nodding to two Marines who’d been waiting in the wings. Connecticut just noticed what with in their hands - a pair of handcuffs and a featureless black hood.

“I’ll be with you shortly, Walid,” Price continued, as the Marines took custody of Kebede from North. “I urge you to use this time to reflect on your situation.”

C.T.’s trance was snapped by Wash punching her gently on the arm. “C’mon, let’s grab some chow,” he urged, his tone a little forcibly upbeat. “The good guys actually _won_ a round, for once.”

Agent Connecticut watched as one of the Marines snapped the handcuffs over Kebede’s wrists, while the other draped the hood over his head. For some reason the delicacy of the motion stuck in Connie’s mind, like a veil was being lowered before a wedding.

“Yeah,” she finally replied, her voice soft and distant. “Looks like they did.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your readership. Please feel free to leave any comments, thoughts, feedback, or headcanons in the comments. Criticism is the only way I’ll ever get better as a writer. If you’d like to know more about me/my writing, feel free to hit up my [About](http://www.pvoberstein.tumblr.com/about) page. I’m also active on both [reddit](https://www.reddit.com/user/pvoberstein/overview) and [Tumblr](http://www.pvoberstein.tumblr.com/), and can be reached through any of the means on my [Contact](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liara_90/profile) page.
> 
> And so ends an infrequent exploration of writing action. I hope some of you enjoyed it. Writing the Freelancers is something I’m still learning to do (particularly Freelancer-era Carolina); it doesn’t come as naturally as _RWBY_.
> 
> I was trying to write in a more cinematic style, so I hope you were able to _visualize_ what was happening reasonably well. And that the pace didn’t bore or overwhelm you.
> 
> Thanks for making this far.


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